Races

Serinor is home to ten unique races, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and professions.

Humans

Humans are an extremely religious race that has spread across all of Serinor in their neverending quest to bring the teachings of the Divine Light to every corner of their world. Each of their cities centers around its temple, where the human priests offer healing and guidance. The seat of the human religion, the High Temple of Gelaham, is known the world over, both for the scope of its command and the religious zeal of its guardians, the paladins. The sheer presence of the High Temple fades as one moves farther from its location in Gelaham, and remote human settlements are known to be home to less than divine activities. This odd combination of spiritual awareness and secular knowledge has given rise to the psychic awareness of the psionicists in Oscalen and the single-minded blade expertise of the samurai in Acorev.

Elves

The Elves of Serinor are a lithe and reclusive people, inhabiting only the small group of islands that has been dubbed the Elven Isles. Their three cities--Celendir, Leguviel, and Beloril--are all marvels of natural engineering, blending nearly seamlessly with the dense forests of the islands. The long-lived elves despise combat of any sort, and while they will defend their woodlands when they are directly threatened, they will seldom leave their islands for any reason whatsoever. The rapport that the elves have developed over the century with their forests has given rise to a local priesthood of druids and their attendant warrior-rangers, which the humans view as a threat to the divinity of their own religion. The elves also have a far longer store of legends and tales than any other race on Serinor, giving rise to a large group of bards who sing the old songs and tell the old tales

Halflings

These diminutive humanoids live exclusively in the pastoral, lakeside city of Amunash. They have a great love of leisure and home that prevents nearly all of them from ever leaving. Some of them do set out to see the world, of course, and their mischievious natures and sticky fingers give them mixed welcome in cities controlled by the Human-allied races. Other cities tend to see Halflings as snacks, and the Halflings tend to avoid them. While possessing no great magical talent of their own, the Halflings' remarkable intelligence and creativity led them to create an impressive collection of gadgets and inventions that are unmatched in any part of Serinor. The Halfling engineers create and use these gadgets better than any other, just as their burglars outshine any other thieves in their stealth and thieving ability.

Fairies

The Fairies of Serinor are mostly beneficent elemental spirits. Only mostly beneficent because, regardless of the fact that they tend to sympathize with the Humans and their divine endeavorts, the elements and the sanctity of the fundamental powers in Serinor will always take precendence. They do not truly have anybody's best interests at heart except Serinor's. This attunement to the elemental powers of Serinor and their magical nature in general gives them great control over the area surrounding their four cities, each founded on a different elemental hotspot, and the cities themselves tend to disappear when the Fairies sense hostile creatures nearby. The Fairy devas focus their abilities in befriending the elements, which lessens their magical abilities but allows them to summon elemental pets of immense power. The various elemental lords give themselves up totally to one element, wielding great magical power and even able to become an avatar of the element itself.

Lizardmen

Secluding themselves in Vuurk and Sosta, the ruins of their draconic ancestors' civilization, the Lizardmen are nearly uniformally disliked by the more civilized races of Serinor. This is likely due to the joint facts that the more civilized races were historically little more than food or playthings to the dragons and that the Lizardmen have done little to amend for these past wrongs. The actual fate of the dragons has been lost to time, and all that remain are their watered-down spawn, the Lizardmen. Arguably better suited for martial combat than any other race on Serinor, the Lizardmen retain the tails, scales, massive build, and range of colorations of the dragons, but their wings and superior intellect have been lost. The exception to this are the elite rulers of their race, the dragoners, who are close enough to the original draconic stock to still have wings and, through interbreeding, a range of breath attacks. Also notable in the ranks of the Lizardman nobility are the monks, with the lightning speed of their unarmed attacks, and the assassins, killers trained in a variety of underhanded tactics.

Kobolds

Accepted if not trusted in ports all over Serinor, the Kobolds are a race of seafaring pirate dogs. These canid humanoids have developed the most advanced seacraft and navigational skills of any race in Serinor. Though they call the island cities of Yipyi and Grbok home, they can be found the world over, sailing from one port to the next and sustaining their total monopoly on intercontinental travel. Nothing, neither cargo nor passengers, can cross the seas without the blessing of a Kobold, which normally requires a good bit of gold. The Kobold pirates keep watch over the seas and unhesitatingly destroy any ship not captained by a fellow Kobold. They do have their spiritual side, however, and the Kobolds are dedicated worshippers of various animal totems and spirits. Their shamans call upon the spirits to aid them, while the more aggressive beastlords befriend living animals.

Shadowkin

The Shadowkin are not a coherent race in the same sense as the other nine races of Serinor. The Shadowkin are the undead of Serinor. Originally hailing from all the living races, they are hated by the pious Humans and their allies but respected and feared by those who have resisted the Humans' influence. Their subterranean cities of Aphrosta and Glimbor are little more than massive tombs, home to the large numbers of animate corpses and disincarnate spirits that make up the race of the Shadowkin. None truly know why the Shadowkin do not rest as other dead do except for the Shadowkin themselves, and they refuse to tell even the neutral Lukosian scholars. What is known is that their arcanists are rivaled only by the Lukosians themselves in their mastery of arcane magicks, which led to Human backlash against arcane magic and Lukosians alike. Far more sinister, however, are their necromancers, both for their command of the dark magicks of shadow and their ability to reanimate the dead of their foes. It is unknown whether the dark suits of armor they call dreadlords are animated by the power of the necromancers or are home to full Shadowkin.

Lukosian

Though they retain the large build and ferocious features of their close relatives, the werewolves, the Lukosians are actually quite frail physically. Often found clad in robes huddled over a book in the Library of Esselte or one of the innumerable magickal artifacts in the Banaedoor Laboratories, they have forsaken nearly all physical activity to pursue higher truth and magickal knowledge. Their long-established neutrality in all matters gives them access to the cities of nearly all races, allowing them to collect and hoard knowledge from every corner of Serinor. Their sages take this love of knowledge to the absolute limit, sacrificing nearly everything to learn the workings of every school of magic known on Serinor. The biblomancers of Esselte utilize all magic of the intellect and call out the power of specially prepared grimoires, while the enchanters of Banaedoor focus only on the arcane magicks that let them create and command a vast array of enchanted objects.